Review of NHL Faceoff 2003

NHL Faceoff 2003 is the newest edition to the Faceoff family. This time around they added many extras like a new Career mode, its also faster, and more competitive than ever. The new Career mode allows the gamer to assume the role of the General Manager, leaving the gamer to call the shots for the team and even build a team from scratch. This includes handling trades, free agents, etc

Along with the new Career mode, gameplay also includes a quick start mode that allows the player to start a quick Exhibition game. Choose home or away, a Jersey and skate on. The Exhibition is just a match-up of two teams battling for a win. A Season contains 82 games and an All-star game. At the end of the Season there will be a Playoff to compete for the Stanley Cup. If you suck and just can’t complete a Season, you can also go to Playoff mode directly.

There are many other features such as player stats, team stats, and League information. All of which are things to consider when choosing players and teams, hint hint. Also, the player can choose type of equipment like skates, sticks, left or right handed, and even visors. If you want to take it to the limits, give the hockey players your name or your friend’s name, it will appear on the hockey player’s jersey. Use your imagination; this is something you can have some fun with.

The controls are sweet and deliver quick responses. Move the players around with the directional arrows, X, O, L1, L2 will do things like spin the skater, pass, shoot, sprint, etc. Oh… we can’t forget fighting, this is the best part of hockey as far as I am concerned. Initiating a fight and taking out another player can be done easily with the X and square button. This is a good way to cause your opponent to get a penalty, hehe!!

The graphics are nice looking for sure. The game sports lots of polys. The player models are clearly defined with nice detail, names on Jersey’s, 5’oclock shadows, and face expressions. The ice looks very realistic, nice shadowing effects too. The only negative I found were the player’s movements seem to be a little stiff, other than that it’s a nice looking game.

The audio is probably the games high point and gets you into the mood for Hockey, right from the get-go. The announcers are real life announcers like Mike Emrick (The Devils commentator) and ESPN’s Darren Pang. The crowd is cheering, the players are yelling from the box, along with nice sound effects of slap shooting, banging into the walls of the rink, sound of the puck flying across the ice.

OUR PLEDGE: We promise that we have fully played 'NHL Faceoff 2003' before writing this review. The scores given above are our honest opinion and were not influenced in any way by the manufacturer or distributor of the game.

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"NHL Faceoff 2003 is a nice package, though certainly not as good as EA or Sega’s version but it is still worth the money. I think EA is the true sports specialist. Never the less, Hockey enthusiasts should love all the features packed into this game, too many to even mention in this review. The commentators are fantastic calling play by play. The learning curve is short so most anyone can enjoy playing and there are tons of options for adjusting difficulties, speed and so on.

This is also a great game to play with the buds. If you’re tired of football, call the armchair hockey enthusiasts over, grab some beers, hook up the multi-tap and play some damn hockey! "

Score Breakdown:

Graphics 16/20Playability 41/50Sound 8/10Lastability 16/20

Our Recommendation:

This is a fantastic game that we think you will enjoy playing for quite some time.